III.

CECCHINO BANDINI did not slacken his pace till he found himself,
with his thin overcoat and opera hat all drenched, among the gas reflections
and puddles before his studio door; that shout of applause and that burst of
clapping pursuing him down the stairs of the palace and all through the
rainy streets. There were a few embers in his stove; he threw a faggot on
them, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to make reflections, the wet opera hat
still on his head. He had been a fool, a savage. He had behaved like a
child, rushing past his hostess with that ridiculous speech in answer to her
inquiries: “I am running away because bad luck has entered your house.”

Why had he not guessed it at once? What on earth else could she have wanted
his sketch for?

He determined to forget the matter, and, as he imagined, he forgot it. Only,
when the next day's evening paper displayed two columns describing Madame
Fosca's ball, and more particularly “that
page: 243
mask,” as the reporter had it, “which among so many which were graceful and
ingenious, bore off in triumph the palm for witty novelty,” he threw the
paper down and gave it a kick towards the wood-box. But he felt ashamed of
himself, picked it up, smoothed it out and read it all—foreign news and home
news, and even the description of Madame Fosca's masked ball,
conscientiously through. Last of all he perused, with dogged resolution, the
column of petty casualties: a boy bit in the calf by a dog who was not mad;
the frustrated burgling of a baker's shop; even to the bunches of keys and
the umbrella and two cigar-cases picked up by the police, and consigned to
the appropriate municipal limbo; until he came to the following lines: “This
morning the Guardians of Public Safety, having been called by
the neighbouring inhabitants, penetrated into a room on the top floor of a
house situate in the Little Street of the Gravedigger (Viccolo del
Beccamorto), and discovered, hanging from a rafter, the dead body of
Maddalena X.Y.Z. The deceased had long been noted throughout Florence for
her eccentric habits and apparel.” The paragraph was headed, in somewhat
larger type: “Suicide of a female lunatic.”

Cecchino's cigarette had gone out, but he
con-
continued
page: 244 tinued blowing at it all the
same. He could see in his mind's eye a tall, slender figure, draped in
silvery plush and silvery furs, standing by the side of an open portfolio,
and holding a drawing in her tiny hand, with the slender, solitary gold
bangle over the grey glove.